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It may be set back a short distance from the revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the requisite parapet.
But no trench in sand is the faintest use unless it is revetted.
We dug away the crests, throwing the dirt to the front, and made long lines of breastworks along our entire front, facing, of course, the northeast. Then, at various places, on commanding points, were erected strong redoubts for artillery, floored, and revetted on the inner walls with thick and strong green lumber and timbers.
This regiment belonged to a division of the French Active Army, and in consequence its efficiency was of a very high order. Nowhere had anyone seen trenches so well revetted and so neatly constructed as those occupied by this French regiment.
When the Battalion was at Ypres about a year afterwards a letter came saying that the graves of the two men had been found with an appropriate inscription in the German language. In this sector there was much work to be done. The trenches, which were in a state of decay after the frosts and rains of the winter, had to be duckboarded and revetted.
A few mortars stood in position by the river side, and there were Parrott, Griffin, and Dahlgren pieces in the shore batteries. However numerous and powerful were the Federal fortifications, they bore no comparison, in either respect, to those relinquished by the revolutionists. Miniature mountain ranges they seemed, deeply ditched, and revetted with sods, fascines, hurdles, gabions or sand bags.
Here are bodies of men going through some of the last refinements of drill before they start for the front; here are trenches of all kinds and patterns, revetted in ways new and old, and planned according to the latest experience brought from the fighting line. The instructors here, as at other training-camps in France, are all men returned from the front.
A Company had two platoons in the front line trench 41, some 100 yards from the enemy, and two platoons in a support line called '41 support. The trenches themselves were well-built and revetted with sand bags, and dry enough even during the wettest weather. We had in these days only small shelters the deep dugout was unknown.
Water does not fall so fast upon a slope as upon a perpendicular wall, and a surface made up of comparatively thin bricks has many more joints than one in which stones of any considerable size are employed. As a rule the external faces of all important buildings were revetted with very hard and well burnt bricks.
One, "Boyau 1, 2, 3," was seldom used, being in bad condition; the other, "Boyau d'Ersatz," was boarded and well cared for, and used by all. It ran via the Cabaret Rouge into the Talus des Zouaves, most of the way revetted with a wonderful "wedding arch" revetment, and thence to the front line, passing the left Poste de Commandant.
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